Network time slotted protocols are widely used to establish communications between network nodes utilizing a predictable time frame slotting technique for nodes to communicate, where each network node communicates according to predefined slots. Such protocols provide scheduled, contention-free channel access to improve throughput performance compared to carrier sense techniques. The main drawbacks of time-slotted mechanisms are tight time synchronization related overheads and static centralized scheduling. Prescheduled time-slots can be under-utilized (e.g., unused) especially under low-traffic conditions. The unused time-slots can be even more expensive from a power consumption point of view in low-power networked systems where devices automatically wakeup to listen for data and are in an active state to receive data when in fact there is often no data to receive. Also, the pre-assignment of time slots in each communication frame is most often performed in a centralized manner and thereby unable to change depending on the bandwidth requirements of nodes in a multi-hop network topology, for example.